VR Competition at Animest.21: Beyond the Screen, at the Heart of Memory and Empathy

Animest Hub is the festival's interdisciplinary space dedicated to new visual formats and creative dialogue – for animation and tech lovers, this translates to a series of workshops, debates, and explorations at the border between technology and art, running October 3-10, 2026, at CINETic and Instituto Cervantes. The Animest Hub project is co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB – The Cultural Center of Bucharest, under the București în premieră 2026 program. This year, ARCUB celebrates 30 years of projects that have shaped Bucharest's cultural scene. For detailed information about the Bucharest City Hall's funding program through ARCUB, visit www.arcub.ro.

This fall, CINETic is set to become the digital innovation HQ of the Animest festival. The VR Competition – the only contest dedicated exclusively to virtual reality at a film festival in Romania – confirms that this immersive medium has outgrown the status of ‘technical experiment’ and matured into arresting auteur cinema. This year’s selection of nine immersive VR experiences, curated by Marius Hodea and Mihai Mitrică, is your opportunity to insert yourself at the center of the characters' consciousness and follow their stories as technology becomes a tool for pure empathy.

Award-Winning Stories and Explorations of Memory

• A Long Goodbye / Un lung rămas-bun (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, directed by Kate Voet, Victor Maes): winner of the Venice Immersive Achievement award at the Venice Biennale. With pianist Joep Beving’s music in your ears, you physically step into the inner world of a pianist living with dementia, where memories take shape like a living painting as you interact with the space.

• Less Than 5gr of Saffron (France, directed by Négar Motevalymeidanshah): honored with the Special Grand Jury Prize in Venice, the film builds a striking three-dimensional visual metaphor for the trauma of clandestine migration.

• If You See a Cat (Japan, directed by Atsushi Wada): a 360-degree perspective right from inside the eyes of a cat hallucinated by a traumatized boy, from a filmmaker previously awarded a Silver Bear at the Berlinale.

Social Satire, Acrobatics, and Visual Meditation

• Lesbian Simulator (the Netherlands, directed by Iris van der Meule): enter an autobiographical interactive installation that uses video game aesthetics to question everyday prejudice.

• The Sad Story of the Little Mouse Who Wanted to Become Somebody (France, Germany, Belgium, directed by Nicolas Bourniquel): a biting satire on the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on artistic creation.

• Fallax (Iceland, UK, directed by Owen Hindley): the first Icelandic VR film follows aerial acrobats through motion capture, in a spectacular mythological setting.

• More immersive explorations from the VR selection: the social parables The Big Cube (Finland, China, Belgium, Portugal, directed by Menghui Huang) and RETSU (Japan, directed by Naho Kamimura); the meditative clay-and-particle universe of Sense of Nowhere (Taiwan, directed by Hsin-Hsuan Yeh).

Browse the full VR Competition selection and choose your favorites on the Animest website, here.

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The Animest Hub project is co-financed by the Bucharest City Hall through ARCUB under the București în premieră 2026 Program.

The content of this material does not necessarily represent the official position of the Bucharest City Hall or ARCUB.